He's back!

[Baker, John]

        Thanks (and thanks to Lynne and Arnold, too, all of whom gave
marvelously consistent answers).  Just to clarify, the article with the
claims about the Irish language involved a different faculty member, not
Cassidy.

John Baker


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
Of Jesse Sheidlower
Sent: Thursday, August 31, 2006 12:06 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: He's back!

On Thu, Aug 31, 2006 at 11:46:01AM -0400, Baker, John wrote:
>
>         The faculty page also links to an article about the teaching
> of the Irish language.  In the midst of some more plausible claims
> about the Irish language (that verbs come first, adjectives follow
> nouns, and so forth), we see the claim that there are no words for
> "yes" or "no" in Irish.  Is this really true?

It's really true. The usual response to a yes/no question in Irish
involves repeating the verb with or without a negative particle.
There are alternatives if you need to express the concept of yes-ness in
the abstract. This is the same as Latin, really; there was no single
word to answer questions in the affirmative, though for _Sic et Non_
Abelard could use those words to express what we'd represent as "yes and
no" in English.

Jesse "Not otherwise in agreement with Cassidy" Sheidlower OED

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org